Articles

A. Marx, Karl, was born on May 5,
1818 (New Style), in the city of Trier (Rhenish Prussia). His father was a lawyer, a Jew,
who in 1824 adopted Protestantism. The family was well-to-do, cultured, but not
revolutionary. After graduating from a Gymnasium in Trier, Marx entered the
university, first at Bonn and later in Berlin, where he read law, majoring in history and
philosophy. He concluded his university course in 1841, submitting a doctoral thesis on
the philosophy of Epicurus. At the time Marx was a Hegelian idealist in his views. In
Berlin, he belonged to the circle of "Left Hegelians"(Bruno
Bauer and others) who sought to draw atheistic and revolutionary conclusion from Hegel's
philosophy.

After graduating, Marx moved to Bonn, hoping to become a professor. However, the
reactionary policy of the government, which deprived Ludwig Feuerbach of his chair in
1832, refused to allow him to return to the university in 1836, and in 1841 forbade young
Professor Bruno Bauer to lecture at Bonn, made Marx abandon the idea of an academic
career. Left Hegelian views were making rapid headway in Germany at the time. Feuerbach
began to criticize theology, particularly after 1836, and turn to materialism, which in
1841 gained ascendancy in his philosophy (The Essence of Christianity).

The year 1843 saw the appearance of his Principles of the Philosophy of the Future.
"One must oneself have experienced the liberating effect" of these books, Engels
subsequently wrote of these works of Feuerbach. "We [i.e., the Left Hegelians,
including Marx] all became at once Feuerbachians." At that time, some radical
bourgeois in the Rhineland, who were in touch with the Left Hegelians, founded, in
Cologne, an opposition paper called Rheinische Zeitung (The
first issue appeared on January 1, 1842). Marx and Bruno Bauer were invited to be the
chief contributors, and in October 1842 Marx became editor-in-chief and moved from Bonn to
Cologne.

The newspaper's revolutionary-democratic trend became more and more pronounced under
Marx's editorship, and the government first imposed double and triple censorship on the
paper, and then on January 1 1843 decided to suppress it. Marx had to resign the
editorship before that date, but his resignation did not save the paper, which suspended
publication in March 1843. Of the major articles Marx contributed to Rheinische
Zeitung, Engels notes, in addition to those indicated below (see Bibliography),
an article on the condition of peasant winegrowers in the Moselle Valley. Marx's journalistic activities convinced him that he was
insufficiently acquainted with political economy, and he zealously set out to study it.

In 1843, Marx married, at Kreuznach, a childhood friend he had become engaged to while
still a student. His wife came of a reactionary family of the Prussian nobility, her elder
brother being Prussia's Minister of the Interior during a most reactionary period --
1850-58. In the autumn of 1843, Marx went to Paris in order to publish a radical journal
abroad, together with Arnold Ruge (1802-1880); Left Hegelian; in prison in 1825-30; a
political exile following 1848, and a Bismarckian after 1866-70). Only one issue of this
journal, Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, appeared. publication was
discontinued owing to the difficulty of secretly distributing it in Germany, and to
disagreement with Ruge. Marx's articles in this journal showed that he was already a
revolutionary who advocated "merciless criticism of everything existing", and in
particular the "criticism by weapon", and appealed to the masses and to
the proletariat.

In September 1844, Frederick Engels came to Paris for a few days, and from that time on
became Marx's closest friend. They both took a most active part in the then seething life
of the revolutionary groups in Paris (of particular importance at the time was Proudhon'sdoctrine), which Marx pulled to pieces in his Poverty of
Philosophy, 1847); waging a vigorous struggle against the various doctrines of
petty-bourgeois socialism, they worked out the theory and tactics of revolutionary proletarian
socialism, or communism (Marxism). See Marx's works of this period, 1844-48 in the Bibliography.
At the insistent request of the Prussian government, Marx was banished from Paris in 1845,
as a dangerous revolutionary. He went to Brussels. In the spring of 1847 Marx and Engels
joined a secret propaganda society called the Communist League; they took a prominent part
in the League's Second Congress (London, November 1847), at whose request they drew up the
celebrated Communist Manifesto,
which appeared in February 1848. With the clarity and brilliance of genius, this work
outlines a new world-conception, consistent with materialism, which also embrace the realm
of social life; dialectics, as the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of
development; the theory of the class struggle and of the world-historic revolutionary role
of the proletariat -- the creator of a new, communist society.

On the outbreak of the Revolution of February 1848,Marx was
banished from Belgium. He returned to Paris, whence, after the March Revolution, he went
to Cologne, Germany, where Neue Rheinische Zeitung was
published from June 1 1848 to May 19 1849, with Marx as editor-in-chief. The new theory
was splendidly confirmed by the course of the revolutionary events of 1848-49, just as it
has been subsequently confirmed by all proletarian and democratic movements in all
countries of the world. The victorious counter-revolution first instigated court
proceedings against Marx (he was acquitted on February 9 1849), and then banished him from
Germany (May 16 1849). First Marx went to Paris, was again banished after the
demonstration of June 13 1849and then went to London, where he
lived until his death.

His life as a political exile was a very hard one, as the correspondence between Marx
and Engels (published in 1913) clearly reveals. Poverty weighed heavily on Marx and his
family; had it not been for Engels' constant and selfless financial aid, Marx would not
only have been unable to complete Capital but would have inevitably have been
crushed by want. Moreover, the prevailing doctrines and trends of petty-bourgeois
socialism, and of non-proletarian socialism in general, forced Marx to wage a continuous
and merciless struggle and sometime to repel the most savage and monstrous personal
attacks (Herr Vogt). Marx, who stood aloof from circles of political exiles,
developed his materialist theory in a number of historical works (see Bibliography),
devoting himself mainly to a study of political economy. Marx revolutionized science (see
"The Marxist Doctrine", below) in his Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy(1859) and Capital (Vol. I, 1867).

The revival of the democratic movements in the late fifties and in the sixties recalled
Marx to practical activity. In 1864 (September 28) the International Working Men's
Association -- the celebrated First International -- was founded in London. Marx was the
heart and soul of this organization, and author of its first Addressand
of a host of resolutions, declaration and manifestoes. In uniting the labor movement of
various forms of non-proletarian, pre-Marxist socialism (Mazzini, Proudhon, Bakunin,
liberal trade-unionism in Britain, Lassallean vacillations to the right in Germany, etc.),
and in combating the theories of all these sects and schools, Marx hammered out a uniform
tactic fort he proletarian struggle of the working in the various countries. Following the
downfall of the Paris Commune (1871) -- of which gave such a profound, clear-cut,
brilliant effective and revolutionary analysis (The Civil War In France,
1871) -- and the Bakunin-causedcleavage in the International,
the latter organization could no longer exist in Europe. After the Hague Congress of the
International (1872), Marx had the General Council of the International had played its
historical part, and now made way for a period of a far greater development of the labor
movement in all countries in the world, a period in which the movement grew in scope,
and mass socialist working-class parties in individual national states were
formed.

Marx's health was undermined by his strenuous work in the International and his still
more strenuous theoretical occupations. He continued work on the refashioning of political
economy and on the completion of Capital, for which he collected a mass of new
material and studied a number of languages (Russian, for instance). However, ill-health
prevented him from completing Capital.

His wife died on December 2 1881 and on March 14 1883 Marx passed away peacefully in
his armchair. He lies buried next to his wife at Highgate Cemetery in London. Of Marx's
children some died in childhood in London, when the family were living in destitute
circumstances. Three daughters married English and French socialists; Eleanor Aveling,
Laura Lafargue and Jenny Longuet. The latters' son was a member of the French Socialist
Party.

Q. Who was Frederick Engels?

A. On August 5 (new style), 1895, Frederick Engels died in
London. After his friend Karl Marx (who died in 1883), Engels was the finest scholar and
teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilised world. From the time that fate
brought Karl Marx and Frederick Engels together, the two friends devoted their life's work
to a common cause. And so to understand what Frederick Engels has done for the
proletariat, one must have a clear idea of the significance of Marx's teaching and work
for the development of the contemporary working-class movement. Marx and Engels were the
first to show that the working class and its demands are a necessary outcome of the
present economic system, which together with the bourgeoisie inevitably creates and
organises the proletariat. They showed that it is not the well-meaning efforts of
noble-minded individuals, but the class struggle of the organised proletariat that will
deliver humanity from the evils which now oppress it. In their scientific works, Marx and
Engels were the first to explain that socialism is not the invention of dreamers, but the
final aim and necessary result of the development of the productive forces in modern
society. All recorded history hitherto has been a history of class struggle, of the
succession of the rule and victory of certain social classes over others. And this will
continue until the foundations of class struggle and of class domination--private property
and anarchic social production-- disappear. The interests of the proletariat demand the
destruction of these foundations, and therefore the conscious class struggle of the
organised workers must be directed against them. And every class struggle is a political
struggle.

These views of Marx and Engels have now been adopted by all proletarians who are
fighting for their emancipation. But when in the forties the two friends took part in the
socialist literature and the social movements of their time, they were absolutely novel.
There were then many people, talented and without talent, honest and dishonest, who,
absorbed in the struggle for political freedom, in the struggle against the despotism of
kings, police and priests, failed to observe the antagonism between the interests of the
bourgeoisie and those of the proletariat. These people would not entertain the idea of the
workers acting as an independent social force. On the other hand, there were many
dreamers, some of them geniuses, who thought that it was only necessary to convince the
rulers and the governing classes of the injustice of the contemporary social order, and it
would then be easy to establish peace and general well-being on earth. They dreamt of a
socialism without struggle. Lastly, nearly all the socialists of that time and the friends
of the working class generally regarded the proletariat only as an ulcer, and
observed with horror how t grew with the growth of industry. They all, therefore, sought
for a means to stop the development of industry and of the proletariat, to stop the
"wheel of history." Marx and Engels did not share the general fear of the
development of the proletariat; on the contrary, they placed all their hopes on its
continued growth. The more proletarians there are, the greater is their strength as a
revolutionary class, and the nearer and more possible does socialism become. The services
rendered by Marx and Engels to the working class may be expressed in a few words thus:
they taught the working class to know itself and be conscious of itself, and they
substituted science for dreams.

That is why the name and life of Engels should be known to every worker. That is why in
this collection of articles, the aim of which, as of all our publications, is to awaken
class-consciousness in the Russian workers, we must give a sketch of the life and work of
Frederick Engels, one of the two great teachers of the modern proletariat.

Engels was born in 1820 in Barmen, in the Rhine Province of the kingdom of Prussia. His
father was a manufacturer. In 1838 Engels, without having completed his high-school
studies, was forced by family circumstances to enter a commercial house in Bremen as a
clerk, Commercial affairs did not prevent Engels from pursuing his scientific and
political education. He had come to hate autocracy and the tyranny of bureaucrats while
still at high school. The study of philosophy led him further. At that time Hegel's
teaching dominated German philosophy, and Engels became his follower. Although Hegel
himself was an admirer of the autocratic Prussian state, in whose service he was as a
professor at Berlin University, Hegel's teachings were revolutionary. Hegel's
faith in human reason and its rights, and the fundamental thesis of Hegelian philosophy
that the universe is undergoing a constant process of change and development, led some of
the disciples of the Berlin philosopher--those who refused to accept the existing
situation --to the idea that the struggle against this situation, the struggle against
existing wrong and prevalent evil, is also rooted in the universal law of eternal
development. If all things develop, if institutions of one kind give place to others, why
should the autocracy of the Prussian king or of the Russian tsar, the enrichment of an
insignificant minority at the expense of the vast majority, or the domination of the
bourgeoisie over the people, continue for ever? Hegel's philosophy spoke of the
development of the mind and of ideas; it was idealistic. From the development of
the mind it deduced the development of nature, of man, and of human, social relations.
While retaining Hegel's idea of the eternal process of development,* [* Marx and
Engels frequently pointed out that in their intellectual development they were much
indebted to the great German philosophers, particularly to Hegel. "Without German
philosophy," Engels says, "scientific socialism would never have come into
being."] Marx and Engels rejected the preconceived idealist view; turning to
life, they saw that it is not the development of mind that explains the development of
nature but that, on the contrary, the explanation of mind must be derived from nature,
from matter.... Unlike Hegel and the other Hegelians, Marx and Engels were materialists.
Regarding the world and humanity materialistically, they perceived that just as material
causes underlie all natural phenomena; so the development of human society is conditioned
by the development of material forces, the productive forces. On the development of the
productive forces depend the relations into which men enter with one another in the
production of the things required for the satisfaction of human needs. And in these
relations lies the explanation of all the phenomena of social life, human aspirations,
ideas and laws. The development of the productive forces creates social relations based
upon private property, but now we see that this same development of the productive forces
deprives the majority of their property and concentrates it in the hands of an
insignificant minority. It abolishes property, the basis of the modern social order, it
itself strives towards the very aim which the socialists have set themselves. All the
socialists have to do is to realise which social force, owing to its position in modern
society, is interested in bringing socialism about, and to impart to this force the
consciousness of its interests and of its historical task. This force is the proletariat.
Engels got to know the proletariat in England, in the centre of English industry,
Manchester, where he settled in 1842, entering the service of a commercial firm of which
his father was a shareholder. Here Engels not only sat in the factory office but wandered
about the slums in which the workers were cooped up, and saw their poverty and misery with
his own eyes. But he did not confine himself to personal observations. He read all that
had been revealed before him about the condition of the British working class and
carefully studied all the official documents he could lay his hands on. The fruit of these
studies and observations was the book which appeared in 1845: The Condition of the
Working Class in England. We have already mentioned what was tile chief service
rendered by Engels in writing The Condition of the Working Class in England. Even
before Engels, many people had described the sufferings of the proletariat and had pointed
to the necessity of helping it. Engels was the first to say that the proletariat
is not only a suffering class; that it is, in fact, the disgraceful economic
condition of the proletariat that drives it irresistibly forward and compels it to fight
for its ultimate emancipation. And the fighting proletariat will help itself. The
political movement of the working class will inevitably lead the workers to realise that
their only salvation lies in socialism. On the other hand, socialism will become a force
only when it becomes the aim of the political struggle of the working class. Such
are the main ideas of Engels' book on the condition of the working class in England, ideas
which have now been adopted by all thinking and fighting proletarians, but which at that
time were entirely new. These ideas were set out in a book written in absorbing style and
filled with most authentic and shocking pictures of the misery of the English proletariat.
The book was a terrible indictment of capitalism and the bourgeoisie and created a
profound impression. Engels' book began to be quoted everywhere as presenting the best
picture of the condition of the modern proletariat. And, in fact, neither before 1845 nor
after has there appeared so striking and truthful a picture of the misery of the working
class.

It was not until he came to England that Engels became a socialist. In Manchester he
established contacts with people active in the English labour movement at the time and
began to write for English socialist publications. In 1844, while on his way back to
Germany. he became acquainted in Paris with Marx, with whom he had already started to
correspond. In Paris, under the influence of the French socialists and French life, Marx
had also become a socialist. Here the friends jointly wrote a book entitled The Holy
Family, or Critique of Critical Critique. This book, which appeared a year before The
Condition of the Working Class in England, and the greater part of which was written
by Marx, contains the foundations of revolutionary materialist socialism, the main ideas
of which we have expounded above. "The holy family" is a facetious nickname for
the Bauer brothers, the philosophers, and their followers. These gentlemen preached a
criticism which stood above all reality, above parties and politics, which rejected all
practical activity, and which only "critically" contemplated the surrounding
world and the events going on within it. These gentlemen, the Bauers, looked down on the
proletariat as an uncritical mass. Marx and Engels vigorously opposed this absurd and
harmful tendency. In the name of a real, human person--the worker, trampled down by the
ruling classes and the state--they demanded, not contemplation, but a struggle for a
better order of society. They, of course, regarded the proletariat as the force that is
capable of waging this struggle and that is interested in it. Even before the appearance
of The Holy Family, Engels had published in Marx's and Ruge's Deutsch-Franzosische
Jahrblicherhis "Critical Essays on Political Economy,"in
which he examined the principal phenomena of the contemporary economic order from a
socialist standpoint, regarding them as necessary consequences of the rule of private
property.. Contact with Engels was undoubtedly a factor in Marx's decision to study
political economy, the science in which his works have produced a veritable revolution.

From 1845 to 1847 Engels lived in Brussels and Paris, combining scientific work with
practical activities among the German workers in Brussels and Paris. Here Marx and Engels
established contact with the secret German Communist League,which commissioned
them to expound the main principles of the socialism they had worked out. Thus arose the
famous Manifesto of the Communist Party of Marx and Engels, published in 1848.
This little booklet is worth whole volumes: to this day its spirit inspires and guides the
entire organised and fighting proletariat of the civilised world.

The revolution of 1848, which broke out first in France and then spread to other
West-European countries, brought Marx and Engels back to their native country. Here, in
Rhenish Prussia, they took charge of the democratic Neue Rheinische Zeitung
published in Cologne. The two friends were the heart and soul of all
revolutionary-democratic aspirations in Rhenish Prussia. They fought to the last ditch in
defence of freedom and of the interests of the people against the forces of reaction. The
latter, as we know, gained the upper hand. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was
suppressed. Marx, who during his exile had lost his Prussian citizenship, was deported;
Engels took part in the armed popular uprising, fought for liberty in three battles, and
after the defeat of the rebels fled, via Switzerland, to London.

Marx also settled in London. Engels soon became a clerk again, and then a shareholder,
in the Manchester commercial firm in which he had worked in the forties. Until 1870 he
lived in Manchester, while Marx lived in London, but this did not prevent their
maintaining a most lively interchange of ideas: they corresponded almost daily. In this
correspondence the two friends exchanged views and discoveries and continued to
collaborate in working out scientific socialism. In 1870 Engels moved to London, and their
joint intellectual life, of the most strenuous nature, continued until 1883, when Marx
died. Its fruit was, on Marx's side, Capital, the greatest work on political
economy of our age, and on Engels' side, a number of works both large and small. Marx
worked on the analysis of the complex phenomena of capitalist economy. Engels, in simply
written works, often of a polemical character, dealt with more general scientific problems
and with diverse phenomena of the past and present in the spirit of the materialist
conception of history and Marx's economic theory. Of Engels' works we shall mention the
polemical work against Duhring (analysing highly important problems in the domain of
philosophy, natural science and the social sciences),* [* This is a wonderfully rich
and instructive book. Unfortunately, only a small portion of it, containing a historical
outline of the development of socialism, has been translated into Russian (The Development
of Scientific Socialism, 2nd ed., Geneva, 1892).] The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State (translated into Russian, published in St. Petersburg,
3rd ed., 1895), Ludwig Feuerbach (Russian translation and notes by G. Plekhanov,
Geneva, 1892), an article on the foreign policy of the Russian Government
(translated into Russian in the Geneva Sotsial-Demokrat, Nos. 1 and 2),splendid
articles on the housing question, and finally, two small but very valuable articles on
Russia's economic development (Frederick Engels on Russia, translated into
Russian by Zasulich, Geneva, 1894). Marx died before he could put the final touches to his
vast work on capital. The draft, however, was already finished, and after the death of his
friend, Engels undertook the onerous task of preparing and publishing the second and the
third volumes of Capital. He published Volume II in 1885 and Volume III in 1894
(his death prevented the preparation of Volume IV).These two volumes entailed a
vast amount of labour. Adler, the Austrian Social-Democrat, has rightly remarked that by
publishing volumes II and III of Capital Engels erected a majestic monument to
the genius who had been his friend, a monument on which, without intending it, he
indelibly carved his own name. Indeed these two volumes of Capital are the work
of two men: Marx and Engels. Old legends contain various moving instances of friendship.
The European proletariat may say that its science was created by two scholars and
fighters, whose relationship to each other surpasses the most moving stories of the
ancients about human friendship. Engels always--and, on the whole, quite justly--placed
himself after Marx. "In Marx's lifetime," he wrote to an old friend, "I
played second fiddle."His love for the living Marx, and his reverence for the memory
of the dead Marx were boundless. This stern fighter and austere thinker possessed a deeply
loving soul.

After the movement of 1848-49, Marx and Engels in exile did not confine themselves to
scientific research. In 1864 Marx founded the International Working Men's Association, and
led this society for a whole decade. Engels also took an active part in its affairs. The
work of the International Association, which, in accordance with Marx's idea, united
proletarians of all countries, was of tremendous significance in the development of the
working-class movement. But even with the closing down of the International Association in
the seventies, the unifying role of Marx and Engels did not cease. On the contrary, it may
be said that their importance as the spiritual leaders of the working-class movement grew
continuously, because the movement itself grew uninterruptedly. After the death of Marx,
Engels continued alone as the counsellor and leader of the European socialists. His advice
and directions were sought for equally by the German socialists, whose strength, despite
government persecution, grew rapidly and steadily, and by representatives of backward
countries, such as the Spaniards, Rumanians and Russians, who were obliged to ponder and
weigh their first steps. They all drew on the rich store of knowledge and experience of
Engels in his old age.

Marx and Engels, who both knew Russian and read Russian books, took a lively interest
in the country, followed the Russian revolutionary movement with sympathy and maintained
contact with Russian revolutionaries. They both became socialists alter being democrats,
and the democratic feeling of hatred forpolitical despotism was
exceedingly strong in them. This direct political feeling, combined with a profound
theoretical understanding of the connection between political despotism and economic
oppression, and also their rich experience of life, made Marx and Engels uncommonly
responsive politically. That is why the heroic struggle of the handful of Russian
revolutionaries against the mighty tsarist government evoked a most sympathetic echo in
the hearts of these tried revolutionaries. On the other hand, the tendency, for the sake
of illusory economic advantages, to turn away from the most immediate and important task
of the Russian socialists, namely, the winning of political freedom, naturally appeared
suspicious to them and was even regarded by them as a direct betrayal of the great cause
of the social revolution. "The emancipation of the workers must be the act of the
working class itself"--Marx and Engels constantly taught. But in order to fight for
its economic emancipation, the proletariat must win itself certain political rights.
Moreover, Marx and Engels clearly saw that a political revolution in Russia would be of
tremendous significance-to the West-European working-class movement as well. Autocratic
Russia had always been a bulwark of European reaction in general. The extraordinarily
favourable international position enjoyed by Russia as a result of the war of 1870, which
for a long time sowed discord between Germany and France, of course only enhanced the
importance of autocratic Russia as a reactionary force. Only a free Russia, a Russia that
had no need either to oppress the Poles, Finns, Germans, Armenians or any other small
nations, or constantly to set France and Germany at loggerheads, would enable modern
Europe, rid of the burden of war, to breathe freely, would weaken all the reactionary
elements in Europe and strengthen the European working class. That was why Engels ardently
desired the establishment of political freedom in Russia for the sake of the progress of
the working-class movement in the West as well. In him the Russian revolutionaries have
lost their best friend.

Let us always honour the memory of Frederick Engels, a great fighter and teacher of the
proletariat!